joshwex90

Maybe I'm missing something. How is this connected to a border policy debate? This sounds very OMNI/PR - some will applaud Germany for being very progressive and others will lambaste the utter PC nonsense. Either way, it doesn't seem to be a question over border policy or security policy, but rather a general question over the sexes...

GUWonder

Passports are used at border control checkpoints.

The machine-readable section of passports having a non-F/non-M inclusion also comes with issues at border control checkpoints.

Discussing passport issues has been part of TS&S for over a decade.

Also, have you given a thought to what such people are going to deal with when dealing with the TSA? Do you realize that the TSA may be requiring a false binary for travel to/from/within the US given how (In)SecureFlight currently operates and how nature produces intersex individuals?

joshwex90

I'm well aware passports are used at border checkpoints. But that doesn't make every discussion about them relevant.

GUWonder

Discussion of travel documents has been part of TS&S for as long as I've been posting in TS&S -- over a decade.

If you think TS&S is not the place to have a discussion about travel documents and sex listings on travel documents, not my problem.

mre5765

Agencies that issue passports and agencies that process passports are too obsessed by gender. Really, what difference does it make? Gender should not be required information on flight records.

GUWonder

They are more obsessed about sex than gender, given passports issued.

Sex-listing requirements on passports was internationally agreed to in the main as a result of most state actor agreement within the ICAO on standards for passports. It wouldn't surprise me if the agreements within the ICAO on passport standards didn't restrict sex listings to just male or female even if noting the field could use M or F.

Sex-listing requirements in even domestic airline records for passengers is a product of the TSA demands. The way airlines have that is restricted to male or female selections, a binary selection that is unnatural given nature produces people who are intersex.

puddinhead

Ouch - after the second change I would look for a Velcro attachment option.

puddinhead

You can fix the body but the brain is a different matter. Search the Internet for ambitious genitalia. Some people are norm with both sets of functional sex organs (very rare) and the parents make a decision which may not match the 'wiring' in the brain.

I worked for an entertainer that was a female impersonator. He told me that he would never chose being gay from the persecution from others if he had a choice.

cynicAAl

or, ambiguous genitalia.

GUWonder

The genetic chromosomal make-up of persons don't all fall into M (XY) or F (XX) categories and fixing chromosomes isn't going to be "fixed" by a surgeon's scalpel or butcher's knife. All the more reason to welcome passports with an X sex category in addition to M or F sex categories.

SeriouslyLost

Talk to many teenagers and "ambitious" is not an unreasonable description.

GUWonder

The TSA has a dedicated government page for transgendered persons, but it explains nothing about what intersex passengers are to have used for (In)SecureFlight data that demands a male or female filing often even to get ticketed?

http://www.tsa.gov/traveler-informat...nder-travelers mentions using the "gender" on the government-issued ID being used for travel. That TSA suggestion doesn't cover X/intersex passengers as a whole.

Flaflyer

Could get interesting at checkpoints. TSA policy calls for same gender patdowns, and their policy is “the gender of an individual is determined by who he or she presents themselves to be.”

What will TSA do with an X? Call for a “Eunuch Assist”?

I imagine having that X in a passport will result in Really Big hassles at immigration in countries who are not gay friendly, like Russia and certain Mid East and other places.

tanja

Good writing. Yes I am also wondering how will TSA deal with this? I dont think they can . They have already difficult problems with female and male.

GUWonder

These changes have been done with the intent to reduce discrimination, including at foreign border control checkpoints where passport control types made issues where passport-listed sex didn't seem (to them) to line up with the photo and/or passport-bearer's in-person appearance. Passports with X sex indication have been used at passport control even in all the Middle East GCC countries, although problems there too wouldn't surprise me still.

Pakistan and Bangladesh are not very homosexual-friendly places in many ways and yet they issue ID for intersex persons such that M and F are not the only (false) choices for such persons.

It seems that those born as intersex persons are far more likely to be heterosexual given the chances of meeting up with and mating with another intersex person of the same exact intersex nature at birth is relatively low.

I don't see what the harm is if ICAO drops the sex field from its standard passport field listings. The X option on passports is a good interim step prior to such sex field elimination on passports.

The TSA already has done opposite-sex/non-same-sex pat-downs. For example, some smaller airports don't always have female TSA employees on the clock when female passengers are at the screening checkpoints and set off the WTMD and/or strip search machine.